abstract i the purpose of this study was to launch a thorough investigation concerning the possibility of differing orientations to the writing proficiency construct by native and non-native english speaking teacher raters. it mainly revolved around the international english language testing system (ielts) that is widely administered and employed as a measure of general proficiency in englis...

although there are studies on pragmatic assessment, to date, literature has been almost silent about native and non-native english raters’ criteria for the assessment of efl learners’ pragmatic performance. focusing on this topic, this study pursued four purposes. the first one was to find criteria for rating the speech acts of apology and refusal in l2 by native and non-native english teachers...

abstract following innovations in the field of elt, a new topic which has recently attracted a lot of attention is metaphor analysis. although this area of research is still in its infancy in elt, it seems that the idea can shed more light on the puzzle of english language learning and teaching. therefore, the major aim of this study is to analyze language learning and teaching in formal a...

the issue of curriculum and syllabus evaluation and revision has been in center of attention right from when curriculum came into attention of educational institutions. thus everywhere in the world in educational institutions curricula and syllabi are evaluated and revised based on the goals, the needs, existing content, etc.. in iran any curriculum is designed in a committee of specialists and...

acknowledgements i wish to express my gratitude to all those who have helped me in preparing this thesis. i would like to express my deep gratitude to my respected advisor dr. kourosh akef, whose advice and comments helped me in the early stages of the research and throughout the writing process. i would also like to express my gratitude to dr. hajar khanmohammad whose invaluable guidance he...

Technology can be a robust tool for converting learning. It can help assert and improve relationships between instructors and learners, change our methods to learning and collaboration, narrow long-standing availability gaps, and modify learning experiences to meet the needs of all learners. This study aimed at investigating the students’ perceptions and attitudes towards blended learning...

like any other learning activity, translation is a problem solving activity which involves executing parallel cognitive processes. the ability to think about these higher processes, plan, organize, monitor and evaluate the most influential executive cognitive processes is what flavell (1975) called “metacognition” which encompasses raising awareness of mental processes as well as using effectiv...

in one pole of the continuum of language learning, theoreticians and practitioners traditionally consider english as english as a second language or english as a foreign language. however, in the other pole of this continuum where english is thought of as the most effective tool for international communication, it is referred to as a lingua franca. those who favor an approach to english growing...

abstract this study aimed at analyzing a corpus of emails gathered from iranian students studying in england. the corpus contained 996 emails that were investigated by employing the framework of chen (2006) to find common patterns in the discourse of these emails. another aim of the study was to find how two request acts (want statements and query preparatory) were used in the emails. the...